Let’s go behind the numbers in this blog post. What are ESPN.com’s analytics?

Alexa.com, a provider of global web metrics, gives ESPN.com a 71 in global traffic rank. That means that there are 70 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than ESPN.com. The site is given a 21 U.S. traffic rank.

Even though the U.S. traffic rank is higher, I consider the global rank to be the more impressive number. Although ESPN has poured resources into ESPN Deportes and other international sports sites, the vast majority of its coverage is still of American sports. The fact that ESPN.com received a top-100 global traffic rank indicates two things — 1) ESPN.com is marketing itself well overseas and 2) American sports are immensely popular across the world.

Alexa states that “relative to the overall population of internet users, the site appeals more to Caucasians.” ESPN.com’s core audience appears to be childless men earning more than $60,000 who browse from school and work. This confirms my sense that ESPN.com is among the sites that contributes most to lack of office productivity.

Of all the data that Alexa provides, this statistic is the most eye-opening: Visitors to the site spend approximately nine minutes per visit to the site and 58 seconds per pageview. Other sites would kill for a five-minute-per-visit average; ESPN.com’s “stickiness” seems sky high. This is particularly good news for the site because many people visit for a split second to check scores or breaking news, so for every person who spends less than a minute on the site there must be people who spend 15-20 minutes on the site — an editor’s dream.

This, combined with the statistic that nearly 7 in 10 people visit more than one page per visit, is a testament to ESPN.com’s success.

Quantcast.com also has data on ESPN.com, but the site notes the ESPN.com has not implemented Quantcast measurement, and thus data is estimated and not verified by Quantcast.

The site shows that 14.7 million people visit ESPN.com per month. Younger males, both white and black, make up the site’s core audience.

Taken together, these analytics confirm many of my assumptions about demographics of ESPN.com readers and also illustrate the global reach of the site and of American sports.